Posted on 01/05/2011 12:12:42 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
Last November Sarah Palin got in a spat with the Wall Street Journal about inflation in food prices—she insisted food prices had inflated dramatically over the past year, and the Journal they hadn’t. A new UN report cites food prices are on a highway to the danger zone. Was Palin right?
First off, it’s important to note that an argument about food prices is really a stand-in for a much bigger issue when it comes to Sarah Palin arguing with the Wall Street Journal. Palin been derided as a lightweight know-nothing who’s clueless about pretty much everything fact-related. Since inflationary policy is riddled with facts and statistics, her joust with the Journal, a national symbol of braniac econ credibility, was a nice maneuver to grab some of that credibility if she could win the argument.
It also served as a metaphor for the Tea Party’s economic anti-regulation agenda: the implication being that rising food prices were just another symptom of the government getting its hands all over your bacon—literally—and messing up natural market forces with its pesky regulation policies.
Palin’s jab at the Jounal, which she published on her Facebook page, reads:
So, imagine my dismay when I read an article by Sudeep Reddy in today’s Wall Street Journal criticizing the fact that I mentioned inflation in my comments about QE2 in a speech this morning before a trade-association. Here’s what I said: “everyone who ever goes out shopping for groceries knows that prices have risen significantly over the past year or so. Pump priming would push them even higher.”
Mr. Reddy takes aim at this. He writes: “Grocery prices haven’t risen all that significantly, in fact.” Really? That’s odd, because just last Thursday, November 4, I read an article in Mr. Reddy’s own Wall Street Journal titled “Food Sellers Grit Teeth, Raise Prices: Packagers and Supermarkets Pressured to Pass Along Rising Costs, Even as Consumers Pinch Pennies.”
The WSJ retorted, insisting that “A broad measure of food prices from the Labor Department shows prices rose at an average annual rate of less than 0.6% in the first nine months of the year” and that “the lowest average annual inflation rate on record was 1.4%, in 1992.”
Today, however, the Guardian cites a new UN report from the Food and Agriculture Organization, an international body that monitors food prices. “An index compiled monthly by the United Nations surpassed its previous monthly high – June 2008 – in December to reach the highest level since records began in 1990.” The paper continues: “The index tracks the prices of a basket of cereals, oilseeds, dairy, meat and sugar, and has risen for six consecutive months.”
The report also mentions that last year “US corn prices rose more than 50% and US soybean prices jumped more than 30%.” So was Palin right? Did she outsmart the WSJ?
Unsurprisingly, not really. For starters, the UN report acknowledges that while food prices are approaching a “danger territory,” they are actually lower in 2010 than their peak in 2008. This jives with the Journal’s observation that “while some items in the shopping cart have risen in price (ground chuck beef is up 4.8%) and others have decreased (bananas are down 5.3%), overall food price inflation has been historically low for the past year.”
Additionally, in its side of the argument, the Journal clarifies there’s a difference between food prices as commodities and the prices that actually get passed along to consumers. About the commodity prices, the Journal notes “supermarkets and restaurants are facing cost pressures that could push their retail prices higher — but it hasn’t happened yet on a large scale. Critics of the Fed’s quantitative easing policy are focused primarily on concerns about potential future inflation.”
So Palin’s salt-of-the-earth, Mama Grizzly knows best methodology of determining inflationary pressures empirically through trips to the grocery store proves faulty once again. If she’s going to hold her own in a 2012 campaign, she should probably re-up on that WSJ subscription—and spend more time reading and less time insisting the paper doesn’t know what it’s talking about.
But hey, like Bush and other hardcore conservatives before her, Palin’s never met a fact she couldn’t ‘refudiate.’
And eerily to most in the media, Palin is batting a thousand despite the unpopularity of her at bats.
I’m done debating anyone about how Governor Palin is NOT stupid. She is a smart woman; and the left is terrified of her bacause her mere presence anyplace with Trigg is a silent chastisement of their debauchery. From now on, any of them holding her in derision gets the automatic remote control click to some other channel; ignored and the silent treatment. They’re no more than anyone else, and no better.
Inflation by another name is the reduction of quantity for the same price. I remember when a “half gallon” of ice cream was a half gallon.
Breyer’s ice cream get’s small every time I buy it but the price is always the same.
Wall Street wants us to believe that inflation has remained low because they couldn’t care less about Main Street.
Inflation by another name is the reduction of quantity for the same price. I remember when a “half gallon” of ice cream was a half gallon.
Breyer’s ice cream gets smaller every time I buy it but the price is always the same.
Wall Street wants us to believe that inflation has remained low because they couldn’t care less about Main Street.
All those price rises and higher costs only happen where we live. They’re not happening in that parallel universe that Liberal Democrats inhabit. It’s called “La La Land.”
Same thing with a “pound” of bacon, which is now 12 oz.
There are three types of lies.
1. Lies
2. Damn Lies
3. Statistics
—Samuel L. Clemens
The guy from WSJ used all 3. Sarah used facts.
Maybe as Communist Party members they’re able to shop in those special stores, like the former Soviet Union once had.
Sarah Palin is 100% correct about food inflation.
When 1 lb of Spam costs $4.69 and a 12 oz. can of Corned Beef is 3.69, Bacon has gone up something awful its $4,00 for a 14 oz package that usd to be a lb/.
Balogna has gone up higher than the cheap brand of sliced ham. Wonder Bread is $3.29 and it falls apart before I can get the sandwich to my mouth. I don’t know what they are doing to bread now , but it doesn’t have any taste or structure.
Beef steak is out of sight for me , now I shop Walmart at their cut rate cenbter aisle, and eat whatever is on sale.
Pepsi last week was $1.89 a Liter and RC Cola .88 cents. RC aint half bad at that price, and it doesnt have Obama’s logo on it like Pepsi does.
Food is getting out of sight, and somebody has the balls to argue that Palin is wrong about the surge in price.
I’d like to take that stupid bastid to where I buy.
The peanut butter we buy now has this large cone shaped indentation in the bottom. The Container's outside dimensions are exactly the same but the cone sticking up in the bottom reduces the contents over 2 ounces.
I drink Wal-Mart’s version of diet Dr Pepper called diet Dr Thunder at .78 cents a 2 liter. Bacon can still be had under $3 if you don’t mind generic, but soup is shooting out of sight for some reason.
The WSJ writer seems to think that (cheap) bananas going down a small percent vs. (expensive) ground beef going up a small percent equal out? In what world do people spend the same dollars per grocery trip on bananas as they do ground beef? The basket of groceries that goes to your home each week is the best guage of food inflation there is, dude.
LLS
Great! After I have a banana burger for lunch, I can make a banana loaf for dinner. Tomorrow it's either spaghetti and banana sauce or bananaritos, I haven't decided which.
We’ve done several things to mask inflation over the years. One is to offshore a goodly part of our manufacturing to low cost countries.
Another is the revolution in computer technology that has reduced costs in uncountable ways. As a consequence of these two factors the erosion of our currency has been masked to a large extent.
Now we have the collapse of the housing market keeping the price of real estate low, and the collapse of the employment markets (not to mention the presence of 20 million illegal immigrants) depressing the cost of labor. These have helped to keep prices from rising any more than they have.
One factor that will directly affect the price of food and everything else will be the cost of diesel and the cost of electricity. Probably most of the cost of anything you buy is the cost of energy, the power required to produce it, truck it, refrigerate it, retail it. As they drive up the cost of fuel and electricity, absolutely everything is going to rise. But you won’t be able to afford it, after you pay your electric bill.
People who actually buy their own food know that prices have risen recently.
I've noticed this and it mystifies me.
This idiot uses ghetto slang for "semen", when he appears to want to say "jibes".
People are stockpiling canned goods like soup for the crash of the eceonomy. Been stockpiling for most of last year. Got around 75 cans of soup alone.
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